Conti, naturally

THEATRICAL is a dirty word in Tom Conti's vocabulary. One of his

favourite stories is about Jimmy Cagney playing Bottom in A Midsummer

Night's Dream. A television interviewer asked how he had approached

Shakespeare. ''It was just another movie,'' said Cagney.

That summarises Conti's approach to theatre. He relishes the ''first

take'' immediacy of filming, and gets irritated over the ''ludicrously

slow'' process of the sometimes introspective, discussion-riddled,

agonising-prone weeks of theatre rehearsal. On Friday night at the

Glasgow Film Theatre he sug-

gested that all actors should be trained in front of the camera to

relieve them of grandiose gestures. London West End theatre was

''rubbish''. Too much theatre directing was about ''mystique''. Too much

Shakespeare acting was about narcissism. The tradition of British stage

acting had let playwrights down.

The organisers of the launch of the Scottish Actors' Studio had

grounds for appprehension as Saturday morning approached. The evening

appearance had been a curtain-raiser. Conti's gently laconic style

disguised the controversy of his statements, but it was there for all to

hear. Now he was scheduled to get a pilot season under way in a workshop

with three groups of actors rehearsing 10-minute scenes from

non-contemporary plays of their own selection. Studio space had been

made available at Scottish Ballet headquarters in Glasgow. Conti had

agreed to divide the work into three two-hour blocks. Would boredom or

sheer exasperation get the better of him?

Adding to the tension was the fact that, defying mathematical

probability, two of the groups had chosen precisely the same scene. Act

two, scene one, of Noel Coward's Blythe Spirit, when the ghost of his

first wife Elvira materialises in front of a Charles Condomine trying to

calm down a domestic spat with his second wife, was a one-in-a-million

shot to be chosen separately by two groups, and here it was, complete

with a symbolic frisson if you equated the two wives with Conti's career

marriages to stage and film.

To compound matters, and you really had to wonder if the two groups of

actors realised this in advance, Coward is a very touchy subject with

Conti. His last stage excursion, a London production of Present Laughter

in which he directed and played the lead, was almost universally panned

by the national critics. Audiences loved it, though. It did a successful

British tour. The experience has led to an embattled conviction within

Conti that his de-theatricalised, clipped, and surgical (he cut 40

minutes) treatment of Coward may be critically despised, but it is dead

right, and more respectful of its author's intentions than ''museum

productions'', stilted and phoney, which have become standard.

Given this background, Conti the theatre director turned out to be a

surprise and a revelation. The actors in the first group were extremely

nervous. He obviously sensed that and used his relaxed charm to put them

at their ease. His sheer professionalism and quick inventiveness

inspired trust rather than alarm. He was democratic, easy-mannered, yet

firm.

''You've done a bit of acting, which we don't need,'' was one of his

first observations on the scene. He managed to convey this in a way that

suggested he could relieve the actors of a tremendous burden they had

brought on to the space with them. So his remarkable demonstration was

to prove. It was not a case of building performances, more like

releasing them from under a great bale of what he called ''Coward

fluff''.

A clear theme was gently but insistently pursued in Conti's remarks.

''That's theatre -- not life. Cut it out.'' ''Take the theatricality out

of it.'' ''Would that happen in life?'' ''Avoid comic mode -- it is

funnier if you make it real.'' ''Do that again, but forget that you are

an actor.'' ''You slipped into anxiety acting there. Keep it natural.''

''You dropped into emergency acting there. You don't have to do that.''

Reduced to a series of short dictums this all sounds simplistic, but

the impact on the emerging life of the scene was remarkable. It became

more real, more watchable. The veil of ''Coward style'' lifted

tentatively at first, and you realised that actors need an unusual

measure of confidence before they can begin to do less, before they lose

the fear of being seen to be lazy and passive, and the comedy began to

sharpen. We began to see what was funny, rather than make the weary

recognition of what the actors were telling us was funny. It was an

impressive argument for Conti's approach.

It would be repeated through the afternoon sessions, and even if Conti

was inclined to admit defeat over the scene from Chekov's The Proposal,

edges had already begun to harden. ''Thank God we have six weeks before

opening,'' he joked. Evidently he feels Chekov is another great writer

maligned by British theatre.

Few would argue with this, but a distinctively Scottish register and

idiom has been demonstrated to have a closer emotional affinity. Perhaps

it was with this in mind that Conti revealed he hopes to interest the

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, in his adaptation of The Seagull.

His workshop turned out, then, to provide a strong opener for the

Scottish Actors' Studio. A pilot season will run over the next fortnight

and the programme involves Peter Capaldi, Eileen McCallum (who will

introduce television cameras), Alison Steadman, Michael Boyd, Gerry

Mulgrew, Bill Bryden, Bryan Cox, Tony Graham, George Byatt, Cicely

Berry, Patrick Raynor, and Jonathan Pryce, all working in sessions with

groups of actors.

Another session with Billy Connolly has been added to the schedule

this Friday. The intensive work will wind up on Friday, March 18, with a

conference to assess the value to actors in developing their craft and

extending their ranges of experience. The initiative, co-ordinated from

a base at The Tramway by Andrew Byatt, looks even this early to have

enormous potential.

' His sheer professionalism inspired trust rather than alarm. He was

democratic, easy-mannered, yet firm '

The veil of 'Coward style' lifted tentatively at first, and ... we

began to see what was funny, rather than make the weary recognition of

what the actors were telling us was funny.